by P. N. Elrod
But the timing was wrong. Dawn was hours and hours away.
He broke my neck. The son of a bitch broke my neck!
I was released and dropped bonelessly to the rough surface of the roof. It should have hurt, but I couldn’t feel anything.
Ruthie giggled, a bubbling, full-throated sound of absolute glee. Two dead men in front of her was funny.
“Hey. . .big boy. . .” She threw herself into Burton’s arms. He caught her hard, and they indulged in some heavy breathing for a moment until he pushed her away.
“He said the cops were coming, doll.”
“We can do it before they get here. Come on.”
“Soon as I’m done.”
“I’ll die if I don’t, come on!”
I heard a slap, followed by a surprised gasp—then she giggled again, ready for a second round.
“You won’t die,” he said. “Get to the kitchen. Clean up the blood. Cut up this belt thing and flush the pieces. Cut ’em small. I’ll be down to help in a minute. Do the back hall, too. Got it?”
She grumbled, but went away, taking the service elevator.
Burton must have suspected I’d smeared the prints on the gun. As soon as Ruthie was gone, he dropped to one knee and wrapped my fingers around the grip and trigger, then aimed and fired anther bullet into Alby’s body. I couldn’t stop him. I was unresisting dead meat.
This was how he marched out of court. He paid attention to details. The cops were to think Alby and I had a beef going, I got shot, took the gun away and shot Alby in turn. But how to account for my broken neck? I didn’t want to find out.
Why can’t I vanish?
I tried, frantic, not caring if he saw, but nothing happened. The nerves that transmitted my will to my body weren’t working. I had no sense of up or down, no feeling for the position I lay in, no pain, no numbness; beyond the casing of my skull the world went on without my influence.
Burton grunted with effort as he moved me. My fixed gaze took in a scenery change I couldn’t immediately understand—sheer, gibbering panic prevented it. A street, buildings. . .at the wrong angles, my arms flopping and swinging above my head. . .
Down, I’m looking down.
I understood too late. He let go, and my inert form tumbled over the low wall.
It takes only a few seconds for a man to drop a hundred feet.
Flashes of things impressed on my shrieking mind: rush of air, windows tearing past, sidewalk coming up. The appalling, helpless agony of falling.
I would hit headfirst.
* * *
Shreds of a consciousness flowed toward a centrality until enough pooled together to be marginally cognizant.
Outside of time, it dreamed, but without comprehension for the harsh emotions that churned and rolled over the remains of memory. The creatures engendering such terrors were alien things imprisoned in solid flesh, enslaved by the needs of that form. They hungered and lusted to feed and propagate, creating more of their kind.
Efficient predators, they killed threats to their kind.
I was a threat.
They’d killed me.
But awareness of a self began to reluctantly return.
After some struggle, it recalled that it had a name:
I had been Jack Fleming, once a reporter; I hung out in a gangster’s club and did odd jobs for him and another friend. I had a girl who was too good for me, and survived a hell of a lot of nonsense since my murder last August. I used to enjoy beer; then I drank blood. It kept the machine running. It kept the machine running and able to do wholly impossible things. . .like. . .like. . .
* * *
I forgot, waking up fully.
Screaming.
Not much to it without air in my lungs, and when I got a breath I clamped my jaw tight. For all I knew something worse might happen. I needed to hear it coming.
There is the impossible, and then there is the unthinkable. I flinched from the latter, which is what I’d just been through.
At some point—which my mind had thankfully blotted out—my ability to vanish had taken over and saved me. Whether that had happened before or after my body impacted did not matter. It was sufficient to know it had worked, and I was sobbing inside with gratitude.
Some while later I tried to move. In this disjointed and shocky aftermath I got the impression my amorphous self was spread like a pancake over a large portion of flat surface, a portion larger than I had any right to cover. That was new.
I pushed off the worrisome thought that I might not be able to recover.
It took no small measure of concentration to persuade my invisible self to pull back into its normal shape—whatever that might be. I could not see in this form, only knew what felt right and what felt wrong.
When instinct told me I was ready for it, I cautiously resumed solidity.
I stood upright, unsteady, but on whole legs. No bullet holes, no shattered bones, everything in place. I didn’t have so much as a bruise for a souvenir, no damage at all unless you counted the stark terror still shrieking through my rattled brain like a tornado.
Trembling uncontrollably, I sat down, leaning my back against a building to let the excess adrenaline run its course. There was no point rushing things. It would wear off, given time. A few decades should do it.
After a while, I bothered to get my bearings: the service alley, no one in sight at this hour, no sign of Gordy. He was probably waiting down the block wondering what was keeping me. I was glad to help a friend in need, but goddammit, there is a limit.
The shakes gradually passed.
I found my feet in time to step into a shadow, avoiding notice from a cruising prowl car. It was closely followed by another vehicle with a similar radio antenna. I thought I knew the driver. If he was who I thought he was, then Gordy did indeed have clout in the city, and Soldier Burton had been a fool to make a challenge.
Things would not run his planned course, though. Alby Cornish was out of sight on the roof. With my body gone from the alley there was no reason for people to look up to see where I’d fallen from. Alby could be there for weeks before anyone found him…unless Burton went back and dumped him in some other spot inconvenient to Gordy and started the mess all over again.
Burton’s intended conclusion to explain the broken neck—that I’d shot Alby, then in a fit of remorse stepped off the roof for a hard landing—had been scotched. He’d would think up something else once he found out I wasn’t where he’d dropped me, and he would march free.
To hell with that.
However much I wanted to go home and have a nervous collapse I’d have to put it off. The only way for Burton to get his proper payback required that I stick around and get some payback of my own.
Had Burton looked over the side to see how my body had landed? Of course he would, but the spot would be pitch black from his vantage. He might stroll out later to check, but not while the cops were watching.
The gun, with my prints, was still on the roof, too.
I had to get up there.
The fastest method was the way I’d come down, but just thinking about it made me sick. My ordeal with gravity aside, I hated heights even on my best night. After this incident I expected the condition to get worse.
Fear is a healthy emotion. It keeps you from doing stupid things like walking too near a fatal edge; something I would not choose to do, but Burton had taken that choice from me. With his history he’d taken choices from a lot of others. Alby and I were just the most recent.
Crap, I wasn’t letting that bastard keep the upper hand. I had to get over that hurdle, so to speak, right now, before it got too high to jump.
At least by vanishing I didn’t have to look down. I felt the press of the wind on what should have been my back as I floated up the side of the building. The brickwork seemed to go on forever. I didn’t dare go semi-transparent to check my progress. Pushing things this far was all I could ask of myself. If I drifted to the side and rose at an angle, I still rose
; the wall would end at some point.
With vast relief I bumbled over the lip of the low barrier and onto the tar and gravel surface to go solid again.
Burton and Ruthie were gone. Nothing else had changed.
Poor Alby—I was feeling quite sorry for him by now—was exactly where he’d been dropped, and so was the gun. I picked it up and wiped it clean on my already ruined clothes, then wrapped a handkerchief around it.
Gun in my pocket and hoisting Alby over one shoulder, I found the service stairs. The elevator would be too noisy to call up from the penthouse level. I went down one flight, put him next to the kitchen entry of Burton’s flat, and listened at the door.
Voices. I’d been right: Gordy had influence. One of the cops was Lieutenant Nick Blair of homicide. He was good at his job. We’d had a few run-ins, and he didn’t like me despite my evil-eye whammy suggestions to the contrary.
Hypnosis was quirky and sometimes unreliable. A suggestion that went along with a person’s normal inclinations, such as I done with the cops outside the club, could last for weeks, even months. A suggestion directly opposed to one’s inclinations did not last long at all.
Lieutenant Blair was one of those with a decidedly mistrustful attitude toward me; I never could make him a friend. There was no point trying to change him, so I did my best to keep out of his way. I didn’t dare let him catch me here with Alby’s body and the murder weapon. Even if I stuck around to persuade him that Burton was the killer I’d still get hauled in on general suspicion. I could not risk that; the city jail had no facilities for vampires.
The voices were muffled. I could make out the conversation, though.
Burton was a perfect impersonation of mystified resentment as he tried to determine what could have prompted such an invasion of his home by the cops. Blair wasn’t sharing much, and from the shrill noises Ruthie made the other men must have been enjoying a quick, uninvited search of the penthouse looking for bodies. I could assume they’d already covered the kitchen since it was empty.
Alby was as well placed as I could hope for, giving the circumstances. If he’d been killed in Burton’s flat, then the logical spot to leave him would be the service hall and its convenient elevator. If the cops found him they might conclude Burton had planned to carry him out of the building via that route.
There was a matter of fingerprints on the murder weapon, though. Ruthie’s prints were on the bullets; I wanted Burton’s on the gun.
But how to separate him from the herd? I couldn’t think of anything. I’d have to bide my time and hope for an opening.
I was tired, though. I’d lost blood and had used up much of myself with all the vanishing. A trip to the Stockyards would cure things, but no time for that now.
The kitchen door was unlocked. I quietly let myself in. Everyone was in the living room. Blair’s men hadn’t found anything; he had no reason to stick around. Soldier Burton was about to phone his lawyer.
Right, no time to plan, just throw a monkey wrench in the works and hope something breaks.
With a silent apology to Alby, I dragged him inside the kitchen, shook rounds from the revolver onto his chest, slammed the door loudly, and vanished.
There must have been a cop just outside. I sensed him charging in to check the noise. He paused, probably staring, opened the hall door, and grunted disappointment that no one was there. In a wonderfully calm tone he invited Blair to come see something interesting.
The next few minutes were entertaining, better than listening to Gangbusters on the radio.
When confronted, Burton squawked his innocence, Ruthie just squawked, and Lieutenant Blair phoned for more cops to join the party. He now had a bona fide murder investigation. His first question to Burton was to ask about the accomplice who had brought the body in. Burton had no reply. In his world the less said to a cop the better.
While they were distracted I floated past, trying to figure the layout of the place. The living room was easy to guess simply by location and size. I couldn’t tell how many were in it, and kept going. I bumped into walls, found furniture, and eventually made my way by touch through the maze toward what I hoped was a bedroom.
The commotion faded with distance, and I took a chance, going semi-transparent.
Bingo.
The big bed was still neat, covers turned down and waiting. A red silk scarf draped over one bedside lamp threw a rosy tint on the walls. Drinks were ready on a table, the ice melted. My initial intrusion must have interrupted a romantic celebration.
Good. They’d spoiled my evening and certainly Alby’s.
No point in planting the gun until it had prints. The cops would find it in Burton’s sock drawer easily enough, but proving he’d fired it was something else.
Then I saw his suit draped over a chair, and things suddenly got simple. His belt was still inside the loops of his pants; change and a wallet were in the pockets. I slipped the little revolver into the right-hand front pocket. The gun was a perceptible weight, but if he was distracted he might not catch on right away.
Voices. . .coming closer. . .Burton made threats about what his lawyer would do to them all. I retreated to a closet and left the door ajar to watch. It was dark inside, and I could vanish quick if anyone opened it.
Two uniforms were with Burton, both grinning. He let drop that he’d make it worth their while if they treated him with some respect. He was told to get dressed so they could respect him downtown.
He stepped into his pants, one leg at a time, same as anyone. I looked for some hint of reaction when he became aware of the gun, but he gave nothing away, not even puzzlement for its presence. It was impossible for him not to be aware of it, especially when he sat to pull on his socks and shoes. That done, he reached for his suit coat, but one of the cops was faster and grabbed it. He checked the pockets.
Damn. I’d considered putting the gun in his suit coat and changed my mind. A man might leave home without his coat, but never his pants, hence my choice. I’d been smart and not realized it.
When he was ready I expected them to put the cuffs on, but Blair must have been wary of going too fast. You have to know when to set the hook before reeling in.
They walked out, and Ruthie came in, accompanied by a matron who’d arrived with Blair’s reinforcements. Ruthie snarled at the other woman, but unselfconsciously dropped her robe and began to dress. I had a fine view, but it was nothing I’d not seen before, and the goods were tainted past the point of all appeal. She’d participated in two murders, my own included, and had tried to seduce Burton right in front of my dead body. That was one cold, cold dame.
She finished and was about to leave when I dragged a suitcase from a closet shelf and slammed it through the closet door, and I mean through. Big noise, lots of splinters.
Then I vanished.
It made a terrific crashing racket. Both women yelped, and the men charged in to investigate. I slipped past to the front room, found a corner as far from everyone as possible, and went semi-transparent.
There’s an art to it; I had to concentrate to not go too solid, but if I held still I’d get to watch without being spotted.
Everyone looked toward the bedroom. Blair was out of sight, probably checking things for himself. A couple plainclothesmen, one with a big camera, called questions. The same two uniforms flanked Soldier Burton, and the matron had a guiding hand firmly on Ruthie’s elbow, keeping her in place.
I needed another monkey wrench.
An armchair would do, something heavy, noisy, and impressive.
Getting behind it, I went solid long enough to lift and throw it across the room, vanishing immediately after.
That livened up the party. Maybe too much. I heard shouts and scrambling, and then things suddenly went dead quiet.
I was itching to peek.
The flat had a broad bank of windows, very modern. The windows had long curtains. I retreated behind them.
Solid again, I felt like I’d been running for hours. I had
to grab a wall to hold steady against a wave of dizziness.
Later, I’ll collapse later. I forced myself to stand and peered around the edge of the curtain.
My stunt with the chair had been thoroughly upstaged by Burton. He’d taken advantage of the opportunity better than I’d hoped. He had the small gun in his big fist, covering the cops while he backed out through the kitchen. Ruthie was right with him, holding the door wide, a crazy smirk on her face. She was having the time of her life.
Blair was in front now, his hands palm down, telling his men to take it easy, and advising Burton to do the same. None of them knew the gun was empty, but no one was taking chances. Burton was in charge, though, and made predictable threats.
He backed into the kitchen. Ruthie would get the service door for him, and then what, the service elevator or the stairs? The latter would be less confining.
Figuring out what to do, I stopped being solid. I rushed past and got to the stairs first, materializing on the other side of the access door. Sure enough, a few seconds later Ruthie tried to push it open. I had my full weight against it. She’d have better luck shifting the Rock of Gibraltar.
She yelled at Burton, who put a shoulder into it with no effect.
They’d have to take the elevator.
It was ready for them, since he’d left it on the penthouse floor after his business on the roof.
I had just enough left for one more vanishing and then I’d have to rest for longer than half a minute. I quit the stairs and slipped in with the escapees just as they began to descend.
“They’ll be waiting for us at the bottom,” Ruthie fretted.
“We can do this. None of ’em wants to get drilled. Move over, lemme operate it.”
Ruthie protested. I found myself abruptly bumping against the ceiling. Burton was taking us down at top speed.
“You’ll kill us!” she screeched.
He laughed. “We’ll beat ’em, doll.”
I started to re-form. Not wise of me, but I’d had enough.